Posts

Greetings all!
My painting has been put on hold for a few days as I put together my latest Forgeworld acquisition. After chatting away about the new Forgeworld Zone Mortalis rules, I decided it was about time I jumped on this bandwagon and got some Boarding Teams of my own.
But what to pick? Now, they'd be based on the Cadian models, obviously, since my army is mostly clad in Cadian-pattern armour. A bit more thought led me to make them Fourth Battalion troops (2 Battalion being the full dress Mordians, and 9 Battalion being the 'Cadian' light infantry). 4 Battalion made its name rescuing an Imperial Saint from the hands of rouge spaceship crew, bursting onto their ship and storming through the passageways to rescue St. Elutor. Anyway, they've since evolved to become heavy combat types, specialising in close-in urban pacification (mainly sewer clearance etc in the Underhive) but also hulks - anything with tight corridors, basically.

Inspired by a sterling, copper-bottomed post from Admiral Drax, I thought I'd post up some more of my considerable fluff on the Palladian Guard. Drax has done some really good Force Organisation charts, something which I've toyed with in the past, so it's inspired me to put my own versions up as well.

The big difference with mine is that it's much less relevant to gaming. Looking at some of the other posts, these are some of the 'wedge-end' troops, ie. companies and platoons, and Force Organisation is a good way to plan your army, see how everything looks from the top down, and even experiment with new army formats.

After a terrific stint of games over the last weekend, I've been catapulted back into 'game' mode, rather than just 'pay GW and paint' mode. And over those games, the issue of 'beardiness' has come up. Let's look it up, shall we?

beardiness |bi(ə)rdīnis| noun 1 the characteristic of being beardy; unfair or unsportsmanlike gaming: he had the beardiest army list ever.2 the trait or habit of selecting units based purely on characteristics, stat lines or rules rather than with reference to an army's fluff: having that many terminators in a 1000pt game is beardyORIGIN unknown (possibly Swedish, or Low Gothic).

Seems pretty comprehensive. Let me give you a real-life example. A recent game as a first-time visitor to a club pitted me against a young Necron player (about 10). He'd 'forgotten' his codex and army list, but some of the more 'interesting' interpretations of the rules included:A Monolith that 'cost 60pts' and 'had…

Tonight's top story: a battle report! Yes, after over 9 months of collecting and painting, and one kill-team game, I finally managed to scrape together the models and time for a nice, 1,000pt smash with my old friend Headologist. Apologies for the rubbish photos, but we haven't quite got round to properly lighting the bunker yet.

The battle was played out in our subterranean enclave known as The (or Das) Bunker, on a 4' x 4' board with (roughly) 1,000 points a side. My own army, 2 Battalion of the Palladian Guard (army list here). The opponents: valiant Spears of Mawdryn. It was going to be bloody. I was using my own house rules for Palladians, while Headologist was trying out some rules of his own which emphasised the hit-and-run nature of his own marines. Anyway, with an Annihilate/Spearhead mission duly selected randomly, battle commenced...

UPDATE 28 Mar 12: Thanks to all those who've commented and read the article. There were some tweaks in the final game as points limit was upgunned to 1,000pts, but the battle we fought is readable here.

Exciting new developments! In the next few days, my Second Battalion troops might get a chance to cut their teeth for the first time, in a planned 600pt Patrol Clash with my long-time Wargaming adversary Headologist. Ha! After battling my valiant Palladian Guardsmen, he'll need a Headologist ... to fix him ... come back to me on this.

Anyway, in a shocking development I am pre-publishing my army list for a bit of public speculation. Also, it is taken from one of my own 'home-made' lists, so I think it's only fair to pre-publish so there are no surprises on battle day. I'll publish the full rules one day, but for now I'll make a short summary in brackets and I'll answer any specific questions in full.

As an update to my Salamander conversion, here's a quick update on some of my recent vehicle projects. You may remember I set about converting an old haulage vehicle into a Salamander with the FW kit recently; the post is available here.
Just to jog your memory, this is the old 'hauler, which I've made to use as a terrain piece. I'm planning to make an artillery command post, with tables, maps and radios etc and this might be a nice addition. However, a Salamander would not go amiss in the 400pt patrol clash games I'm about to play, so I bought the FW conversion kit and shoehorned it into the Hauler. Crucially, I made it entirely without glue so that the Salamander deck can be lifted out to make two models in one. Mod-ability is the way forward, comrades!

Evening all! Have been away for a week, slaving away so not much done this week except a few more bits of the Latvian Legion. I thought I'd just post a brief update on the state of my first Ratling Sniper.

I often spend a bit of extra time on those 'special models' that are likely to get a bit of extra attention. If the Ratlings end up taking out an enemy commander, the first thing my opponent would do is to come over and inspect the paint job of the culprit ... but also, these are the first ever Ratlings I've painted and so it was worth me spending a bit of extra time picking out all the tiny details.
As I said in the first post, these are beautiful models with loads of extra little details like bags of apples, odd knapsacks and things. So it was a joy to paint this little guy, and I'm looking forward to painting another one. I might try and remember to do a step-by-step next time; not so much on how to paint Ratlings, but more about the different techniques …

My attention was drawn this morning to an article on the news this morning about 40K. So much so, that I've decided to take a post to consider it. It's available here. For those readers outside the UK, the BBC is a socialist propaganda website, sworn to overthrow the current world order and enslave humanity. For those readers inside the UK, I suggest you stop paying your licence fee in protest.

Anyway, enough about the site. The article (belligerently entitled: Why are adults still launching tabletop war?) was basically one journalist's disbelief that adults could still be drawn into what was effectively toy soldiers. It was a bit demeaning to have all your life's passion derided as 'toys' or 'figurines', like it's some porcelain Victorian doll rather than a lumbering behemoth of a Leman Russ with heavy bolters and lascannon and battle cannons blazing ...

As an aside, running concurrently with my main focus on the 40K Palladian Guard and the WWII Latvian Legion, I've been working on some Gladiators. It's been nearly eight weeks since I last did an update on them, defraying just how much time the Guard/WWII have been soaking up. Anyway, for those who missed the last update I've been taking part in some Warhammer Historical Gladiator battles. These sorts of games are great, as they only require one or two models. Check out Headologist's blog for the posts on the Roses-tin arena.

After some feedback from Admiral Drax, I decided to splash out on a Salamander kit. The idea was that I could just get the conversion kit, and slot it on and off the back of the Hauler transport vehicle to make two interchangeable vehicles.

The Hauler is basically the leftovers of an old Basilisk conversion, and is just a Chimera with no roof, used as an artillery tractor. It has no in-game effect (although I may whip up a VDR for it soon), it's just designed as a 'terrain piece' for my artillery units.

Today's latest additions to the army: another tank! Being unable to face painting any more infantry for the moment, I decided to plump for a Chimera this morning, so I could mount my autocannon turret. After the protracted Battle of Oxford Street (in which I valiantly fended off all efforts by GW staff to laden me down with White Dwarf subscriptions, glue, paint, brushes, books and Finecast, all after a preliminary skirmish battling through hordes of numerically superior spotty teenagers), I managed to walk away with a Chimera, as well as some 60mm bases for heavy weapons teams. Will probably do a conversion step-by-step on the Palladian HW teams in the next few days.

Despite my ongoing work on the Latvian Legion for an upcoming WWII campaign, I've been working on my Palladian Guard army too. In fact, once the infantry squads I've already purchased are painted, that's the vast majority of a 2,500 point force complete! So, to keep everyone updated I've taken a few army shots of how the force looks at the moment, which I'll put up here.

Welcome To Palladian Guard

I'm Ed, and welcome to the Palladian Guard blog. This site formerly followed the fortunes of my 40K army, but now I also post about my wider interest in historical gaming, as well as all my painting and modelling.

If you like what you see, or want to know more, email me at colonelscipio(at)yahoo.co.uk.